Power Rangers: Girl Ops
by Shadow Crystal Mage
Summary: Yuuki Asuna. Ayano Keiko. Shinozaki Rika. Senou Kaede. Kirigaya Suguha. Each spared from the deathgame known as Sword Art Online by a small twist of fate. Or perhaps not. It's possible being trapped by a madman inside a deathgame and forced to fight for their lives for two years is actually SAFER than what fate has in store for them. Because fate is never kind to Power Rangers.


_Black. Pink. Blue. Yellow. Red. Green._

 _Long ago, the six colors lived in harmony, giving power to a legion of warriors who defended the Zeo Crystals. Then, everything changed when the witch Bandora attacked. Only the Red Ranger, leader of his team, managed to live long enough to stop her evil. In their battle, the Zeo Crystal vanished._

 _64 million years have passed…_

….

Power Rangers: Girl Ops

by Shadow Crystal Mage

Chapter 1: Day of the Deathgame

Disclaimer: Power Rangers is currently in the hands of Saban, but they're also with Hasbro now. Super Megaforce Sucks. Don't try to deny it. Not even Jason David Frank could salvage that abortion made of shit and puss, covered by a skin of lies. SAO was made by Kawahara Reki. Going by the numbers, the NEXT arc of SAO will be 18 volumes long. This is doujin and thus a traditionally ignored medium, because they've all been there.

….

Yuuki Kouichirou was a perfectly ordinary company executive working for his father's company, of the sort you could find anywhere in Japan. He put on appearances, worked hard, let his life be decided by his parents long ago, and was well on his way to passing on this passive-aggressive abusive childhood to the next generation. The only thing that might have marked him as anything but an automaton was a fondness for video games. In truth, he was a casual gamer at best, and rarely managed to play games all the way to the end, but he found games relaxing and enjoyable, and as vices went it was certainly more circumspect and socially acceptable than, say, putting on body armor, getting into his sports car and going out to beat muggers unconscious with his fists. He'd just managed, with some help from some connections, to get hold of a new copy of a new game, the first of it's kind. A virtual reality game that immersed the player in a virtual world that they experienced with their whole body.

No phone call requiring he go to an overseas meeting interrupted his setup and preparations. The next day, which he had used one of his rarely utilized days off to secure, nothing interrupted him as he finally got the hardware calibrated and set up the game. Slipping into a comfortable pair of pajamas, he placed the NerveGear on his head and booted up the game.

Hours later, his sister found him.

….

Shinozaki Rika was a perfectly ordinary hot gamer chick, of the sort you could find anywhere. She was not, as it were, a hardcore gamer, and neglected to pre-order a copy of Sword Art Online, deciding to leave it to chance by lining up on release day to try and acquire her copy then. Sadly, it was not to be. Of the ten thousand first issue copies of the virtual reality game, not a one made it to her hand. She sighed, and resigned herself to get it later when it eventually became available for download. Ayano Keiko, who at birth had been dangerously close to being named 'Rutherford', found herself in much the same situation.

Senou Kaede, who'd been a Beta Tester for Sword Art Online, _would_ have remembered to pre-order the game if being a Beta hadn't come with the benefit of getting a copy of the finished game as thanks for her work, and had been all set to spend opening day seeing what changes had been made in the finished version and how many had been influenced by her comments. However, her mother had run out of rice for lunch and had asked her to go to the grocery to get more. By the time she'd returned home, the news was running stories about those trapped in the 'deathgame' and Kayaba Akihiko's warning not to attempt to remove them. The rest of the day was spent calling in a tip to the police and her new NerveGear and copy of SAO being carted away as evidence, which she was unlikely to ever see again. Kaede became the only player who'd actually gotten a copy of Sword Art Online to not actually be caught in the game

This is how 9998 people became trapped in Sword Art Online. This is how the boy called Kirito would meet the man called Kou and helped him survive his first Boss Battle. How, without the Argo guides to help those who were not Beta Testers keep from getting killed, Kibaou died horribly from ignorance, arrogance, and wanton stupidity. How Kou and Kirito stayed in touch and eventually became good friends. How Kirito discovered the Hollow Area and met the Treasure Hunter Philia. How they somehow had a daughter named Yui. How he met the Spriggan Yuuki, and learned of the existence of Alfheim Online, running parallel to SAO's servers. How he discovered the conspiracy of Nobuyuki Sugou experimenting on trapped players. How, after defeating the boss on the 100th floor, everyone was freed two years and eight months later.

This, however, is not their story. This is the story of Yuuki Asuna and Kirigaya Suguha, who lost their brothers. This is the story of Shinozaki Rika, Ayano Keiko and Senou Kaede, who dodged losing almost three years of their lives. This is the story of those left behind… and the reminder that no matter how horrific a game may be, reality is always far, far worse because it doesn't have to worry about things like internal consistency, fairness, loot drops and programmed variables.

It just has to happen.

….

 _Three months after the Sword Art Online incident_

Yuuki Asuna sat on the bus, listening to her classmates from chatter and wondering about her school's sensibilities. Most schools, even highly prestigious and expensive all-girls private schools like Tokiwadai, when going on a field trip, went to either Tokyo Tower (as was traditional, and school administrators are nothing if not traditional) or Kyoto (if they had more money). If they had a _lot_ more money, they went to Hawaii. This was **Traditional**.

So Asuna had to wonder why, of all places, they would be going to see a rock quarry. Not even an active rock quarry, which would at least have things to look at. An abandoned rock quarry, with was just, basically, a hole in the ground. A big hole in the ground, but still a hole. Apparently, local television stations used the site for filming shows and movies, but as there wouldn't be anyone filming, Asuna really didn't see the point. She had to wonder if someone had run off with the school's fieldtrip money or something.

The quarry wasn't far outside Tokyo, and when they arrived, Asuna was surprised to see that other schools seemed to have gotten the same idea (or possibly also had their field trip money stolen), as there were several buses in a level field that seemed to have been decided upon as a parking lot, with at least 7 different school uniforms in view. People were milling around but, due to the lack of anything like a convenience store or even a bus stop (or even a road. They'd been traveling on dirt for some time), most were staying close to their buses.

"What's happening here?" one of Asuna's classmates asked.

"I heard that the MEXT issued some kind of decree to move focus away from computer-related subjects and towards more practical fields," another of her classmates answered. "It's just another kneejerk, pointless reaction to that Sword Art Online thing. You'd think they'd want people to learn more about computers so they can undo this sort of thing."

"Government," the first girl sighed. "What a pain."

Someone shushed her, and though Asuna didn't turn to look, she was sure a significant glance was being directed her way. Yuuki Asuna, whose brother was one of those trapped in Sword Art Online. Which she ignored, of course, because this was Japan and one had to conceal, not feel.

After they disembarked, their teacher handed them a printed sheet and told them to 'look for and identify different kinds of rock to be found in the quarry'. At which point Asuna had to wonder if someone really _had_ stolen the field trip money, or no one could think of anything else to do.

….

No one knows how the explosion at the quarry happened. Only that girls from several different schools had found an excavated cave-like section near the tree-line and had somehow triggered the blast. Many fingers were pointed, accusations were leveled, and though thankfully no one was seriously hurt, threats of some kind of legal action were made. Accusations were leveled, by teachers, by parents, by students themselves. Some people blamed boys from Nerima, who were infamous trouble makers and seemed to have gone into the cave to fight. Others blamed those weirdos from Mahora, who had been making out and were annoyed people had crashed their make-out spot, as if pent up sexual frustration had caused the explosion. His schoolmates, quite loudly, blamed Sousuke Sagara who everyone knew was a military nut and might have even had explosives on his person at the time. That he testified all his explosives were accounted for didn't help matters.

No one suspected Ayano Keiko and Senou Kaede, who had run to get the teachers. No one suspected Yuuki Asuna, who had organized the students in the cave to tend to anyone injured and dig out the students that had been caught in the blast. By some miracle, the rocks had fallen in large, sheetlike sections that had somehow held together when they fell, leaving the students trapped buried in hollows between them. No one suspected Shinozaki Rika and Kirigaya Suguha, who had frantically helped students get out, lifting what rocks she could and helping people shimmy out of where they'd been trapped. After all, they were the least injured people there, so clearly they had been furthest from whatever blast had happened, surely drawn to the location by the sound of the explosion.

And if anyone remembered that the five had been huddled against the wall where the blast had occurred, then clearly they were wrong.

This was, of course, all later, as the teachers and various student council members of several schools quite sensibly saw to making sure that the affected students where sent to the closest hospital. The Ousai Student Council was exceptionally helpful in that regard (it turned out their vice president's family owned a property nearby and volunteered the use of one of the family helicopters to get some of the more seriously wounded students to the nearest hospital, which it turns out they also owned), despite a rather jarring tendency to sudden attacks of dirty jokes and innuendo. Several girls had heavy bruising, with one having difficulty breathing because of cracked ribs, and two more had broken legs. Several more needed stitches, and more than one uniform was ruined because of torn fabric and blood.

Eventually, everyone went home. People who probably didn't deserve it were scolded. Several school uniforms had to be replaced, to added inconvenience and expense. Some girls bonded while waiting in the hospital, developing at least seven life-long friendships and a sudden lesbian relationship between a nurse and student. At least three girls bitching about it at home discovered the joys of mutually safe, sane, and consensual incest. One developed a crippling agoraphobia _and_ claustrophobia and led a _very_ interesting life unable to live both indoors or outdoors, resorting to a weird camera-mounted VR headset to function. We're not sure how that worked, but it let the girl get on with her life, and that's probably what matters? Don't look at me like that, this is Japan.

And some people… some people went home with kind stalker-y pet rocks.

At least they were very pretty rocks.

….

There was no practice today, so Kirigaya Suguha was at the hospital.

"I hope you appreciate this," she said towards the unmoving, silently breathing figure on the bed she was sitting next to. Usually the metaphor in these circumstances was of someone sleeping, but even someone who didn't know the situation wouldn't use that here. For one, the figure was too still, too stiff. There were none of the random muscle movements and limb adjustments of the truly sleeping, though there was occasional snoring as nasal passages relaxed and flapped. "I quit the kendo team because of you, you know. Grandpa would be furious, but he's dead now so that's okay."

Her brother was unresponsive, which was an actual improvement over how he'd been since they were ten, when he'd started being sullen and avoiding her, some time after he'd finally given her back her Legos because mom had finally bought him a housing for his computer.

"Was it the Legos? It was the Legos, wasn't it. You know, I'd have been fine with you using the Legos a little longer. Really, you didn't need to give hem back. I hardly played with them anyway," Suguha said. "You could have used them for that server stack you were always going on about. All you had to do was ask. Dummy."

She sighed. Outside, there was a lot of traffic as the family of other people taken by Sword Art Online visited them, some holding overnight vigil, others just stopping by to see them and to berate the doctors as to how long before they woke up, as if still not understanding how this worked after three months. Idiots.

"I've got to go onii-chan," she said, getting up and gathering her bag. She laid a hand on his and said, pleadingly, "Don't die, okay?" There'd been a lot of deaths in the first month. Even just today, she'd recognized the rattling of the morgue gurney going past her brother's room twice. "We'll talk tomorrow."

Slinging her bag over her shoulder, Suguha left to go back home.

….

Many kilometers (because this was Japan and they had no truck with that silly 'miles' nonsense some countries still insisted on despite clearly being a really stupid and hard to convert unit of measure) away from Japan, in International waters, the fishing vessel _Kintaros_ pitched and rolled in a heavy sea.

"Hikaru! Pull up the nets!" the captain shouted over the rising storm. The weather had changed fast, and they needed to get out of there before the nets fouled and they lost their catch.

The nets rose out of the water, wriggling with fish that gleamed in the boat's spotlights that they'd tuned on when the clouds had moved in. The winch boom swung over the deck and released the nets. Their catch flopped into the hold. Something in the middle of the pile of fish hit the deck with a heavy thud. It was hard to see what it was until they got closer.

"What is that?" Hikaru asked.

Inside the boat's hold there seemed to be some kind of frozen body. The captain and the rest of the crew stared down at it. It seemed like the naked corpse of a woman, and despite what the Internet might say about the sexual habits of the Japanese, it wasn't looking attractive to anyone in the crew. It was _that_ ugly.

"Boss, I've seen this horror movie," another member of the crew said nervously. "We should toss that back into the water and get the hell out of here. It's probably a vampire or a ningyo just waiting to wake up and kill us all."

The captain sigh. "Soujiro, stop messing around. This is real life, it's not going to do anything like that."

"You don't know!" Soujiro said. "We live in a word where some crazy guy can trap you in virtual reality! I know how this goes, soon we'll have terrorists with super powers, American billionaires in capes and power suits, and then it's all over except for the alien invasions!"

"And that's the last time we let you pick what movies we're going to watch," the captain said. "Someone set this aside so we can show it to the police. Everyone else, get back to work!"

The other crew members, despite casting wary looks at the corpse, moved to comply. One smacked Soujiro and called him a dumbass.

The luckless crew member who had to wrangle the corpse aside so it wasn't on the fish noticed the corpse seemed to be clutching something. It was round and seemed to be made of green glass or rock. Curiously, he reached for it, then froze. Did that corpse's fingers just twitch?

Hastily pushing it was far back as it would go, he threw a plastic sheet over the corpse and got the hell out of there, wondering if going to a temple would exorcise this, or if he should become a monk just to be safe. After all, he'd seen those movies to…

….

Keiko turned the disk over in her hand. It was a curious, almost unnatural (in the sense of 'unlikely to have been formed by nature left to its own devices') thing, a round, disk-shaped transparent yellow crystal, thickest in the middle and thinner at the edges. A finger-wide band along the edge on both sides seemed covered in gold, or at least pyrite, giving the impression of of a gold-framed glass coin. There was a subtle pattern of lines in the center that looked kind of like a cat in 3/4ths profile. Very odd. It almost seemed to glow with it's own inner light, and–

Keiko frowned, then walked over to the light switch and flicked it off. The room plunged into darkness, light only by the light coming from her window and the soft golden glow coming from the crystal in her hand. Even as she watched, the glow seemed to intensify.

With a yelp, Keiko dropped the disk, rubbing her hands on her shirt. Which clearly wouldn't do anything if she had, as she suspected, been handling a radioactive substance, but she couldn't help herself.

Yet even as she watched, the glow seemed to fade, almost disappearing entirely. The slight glimmer could easily have been reflected light from the window.

Yeah, Keiko didn't believe it for a second. She knew 'glowing' when she saw it.

Eyeing the rock in question, Keiko edged around it towards the door, as if afraid it would jump on her. No need to panic just yet. Her dad had a Geiger counter from her grandfather and she knew how to use it, she'd just check to see if her new rock was radioactive before she panicked. Who knows, it might be some new luminescent phenomenon that she could study and have it named after her.

Nodding to herself, Keiko left the room and headed for the part of the garage where her dad kept his personal tools and assorted knick-knacks.

She nearly dropped the Geiger counter when she turned around and saw the yellow crystal sitting innocently on his workbench. She _definitely_ screamed.

Forget radioactive, she was in a horror movie! Ah, she was too young and cute and a virgin to die!-!-!-!-!-!

….

Kaede arrived home to find her parents out, with a note on top of a covered bowl on the table saying they might not be back that evening. She sighed a bit in exasperation at her parents, who after all this time still acted like horny newlyweds, if not teenagers. She'd never accidentally walked in on them, but she sometimes had nightmares about it. Fortunately, at a very young age her mother had taught her to never enter a room with a sock on the door and weird noises coming from inside. As she grew old enough to find porn on the internet, she had been very thankful for her mother's teaching and foresight.

In the bathroom, she stared woefully at her Eiryou Koukou school uniform. Most of the dust had come off, but the jacket was still torn in places. Fortunately there were no stains. She'd ask her dad to sew it up later, after she'd beaten the dust out of it.

After a quick bath, she sat in front of her computer in just her sleepwear, logging in to her Elder Tale account. There had been a strange drop off of players in the weeks after the Sword Art Online incident, as if people where afraid they'd be trapped in Elder Tale too if they kept playing. Which she couldn't really blame them for, since she'd gotten leery about games herself immediately afterwards. For about, say, two hours, at which point she decided to put things behind her.

As she guided her summoner character along a field, following up on rumors that some old, commercial tie-in quests had stealthily been put back in place with the serial numbers filed off, she idly toyed with the strange pink rock that shed found in her uniform pocket, nimbly dancing it over her fingers like an over-sized coin. So far she had confirmed the [Variant Excalibur] quest, the [Returning Mighty Shield] quest, the [All-Killing Revolver] quest and the [Orange Armor] quest had been returned, renamed and likely with some slight cosmetic changes to the final item so that they wouldn't have to pay royalties. She had even finished the [Returning Mighty Shield] quest since she'd luckily had the right items in her inventory, coming away with a nice new round shield whose special property let it be thrown around like a boomerang, even if she couldn't equip it. Right now she was off to confirm that, yes, the [White Cat-Rabbit Thing] NPC that gave the variant [Mahou Shoujo] subclass– the one that gave you strange stats more in line with the vampire subclass than a spellcasting class– was to be found in one of the 5 random locations after activating the quest when she received an message.

 **[KonaKona]** : Hey, Argo-chan, got a minute? Do you still have that map for the [Raith Deeps] quest?

 **[Argo:** Sure, but it'll cost you. That should be public knowledge by now, shouldn't you just check a wikia site?

 **[KonaKona:** Too lazy! Besides, Argopedia is better!

 **[Argo:** Again, my services aren't free Ko-chan.

 **[KonaKona:** Map please!

As Argo checked through her items to check if she still had one of her scribed maps, she wondered what kind of rock this was…

….

Shinozaki Rika eyed the shiny black rock suspiciously from behind the sofa as it sat innocuously on the floor in front of the TV. For one thing, it was black, and not to be rockist or anything, but everyone black rocks were bad news. The shiny golden trim on the edges wasn't helping. It was totally giving off 'cursed object of the Evil Overlord' vibes. "Okay bud," she said, adjusting the pot that was acting as an impromptu helmet on her head and holding the tenderizing mallet like she meant business. "Let's try this again."

With the arm holding the frying spatula at full extension, she gently wiggled it under the rock and, with a deft flip, sent it flying out the open window of her family's apartment, hopefully not to land on some poor person's head several floors below. As soon as it was out of the room, she quickly rushed over and slid the window shut, then hurriedly closed the blinds just to be sure. Satisfied, she nodded to herself and turned around.

The black rock sat innocuously on the sofa.

Rika sighed. This was the fifth time she'd tried this, and she was starting to sense a trend. "Okay, stop following me!" she said at it accusingly, wondering if she'd make it to a temple if she started running now. So far, the light in the apartment hadn't failed, the temperature hadn't dropped, no creepy voices had started sounding and no one had crawled out of the TV, so maybe she still had a chance to foist this off on someone else. She was pretty sure she hadn't bullied anyone lately, and none of her relatives had died recently, so there was a chance this wasn't directly related to her? Unless this was one of those 'general and non-specific hate against all humanity' grudge things, in which case she was royally screwed no matter what.

"Okay," she repeated, dropping the spatula and holding the meat tenderizer like she meant business. "I don't now you, and you don't know me. So how about we just both walk away and nothing unpleasant has to happen to anyone. Deal?"

In response, the stone began to glow.

It was only when Rika's shoulders hit the wall behind her that she realized she'd backed away as fast as her legs could move. "Okay!" she said a little breathlessly. "The evil black glow? Not helping your case buddy! I swear if you don't cut it out I'm selling you to a jewelry store!"

Abruptly the glow cut out.

Having watched many horror movies in her time. Rika's eyes immediately darted in as many directions she could think of including down, up, towards the TV, under the sofa, behind her, at the wall, and out the window. When no hands ripped through wallpaper, or popped from under the table to drag her down to some hellish dark dimension, she eyed the rock with uneasy confidence. "Um, peace?"

The stone stayed still and non-glowy. Rika hoped that meant yes. Why were her parents visiting college friends out of town for a week when she needed them?-!

….

Officer Kamijou Touma had been with the Tokyo Police Department for over six years. Long enough to see some weird stuff, like the ponytail bandit (who ambushed women at night while wearing a horse-head mask and gave them ponytails), the Karaoke killer (who smashed up karaoke machines because they felt they were too loud), that time a tiger escaped the zoo and was found sleeping at the top of Tokyo Tower, and that incident with the girl who cut off her cheating boyfriend's head and escaped on a nice boat.

This… wasn't exactly weird stuff. This was unusual stuff, but it was still a dead body, no matter how much one of the crew member insisted he saw its fingers move and the other what repeatedly exclaiming they were now stuck in a horror movie. After he interviewed the crew of the _Kintaros,_ he had let them go and started a careful examination of the scene. First, he looked over the deceased without touching her, idly touching his gold front teeth in thought (they'd been knocked out in an unfortunate training accident in the academy involving a battering ram).

She looked frozen. Not in a hot Elsa-hime way, more like a root someone had left in the freezer. That was weird all by itself. She'd been in the water. How was she frozen? Had whoever killed her– and here his mind started going wild– put her in a freezer to confused the possible age of the body, making it hard to identify so that it couldn't be linked to any specific missing persons report and thus keep the murderer's alibi intact? Plus the body was bent in strange way, as if some powerful force had crushed into that position.

He frowned, noticing something in the woman's hands. It was some kind of green disk. A clue? Excitedly, he reached down for it. What a lucky break! Perhaps this would finally break his streak of misfortune that had kept him from being promoted for five years!

AS his hands made contact with the object, cold, thin hands suddenly clamped down on his arm, and he let out a scream of surprise. In horror, he saw glowing green eyes glaring at him from what seemed an emaciated corpse, and there was a snap as the grip on his arm tightened even further, breaking bone.

"Mine!" a hoarse, wrathful voice hissed, as if long unused, as Officer Kamijou Touma began screaming in earnest. The last thing he felt was someone ripping out his front teeth.

….

Asuna sat at her customary place at the dining room table as the mid-morning sun shone through the windows. She blinked, turning her head with strange slowness as she looked about her, wondering why she was there. Hesitantly, she stood from her seat.

She faced the front door of the house, having no memory of having walked there, yet she was not surprised. It was natural, it was normal that things were so. She opened the door and stepped outside. Despite the bright sun, the sky seemed strangely gray and overcast, and she smelled ash and char on the wind. A statue of her mother stood a few steps from the door, looking made of char and ash. She stepped forward, reaching towards it, and it crumbled to dust at her touch. Suddenly she noticed the holes in the wall around the property. How the house across the street looked like it had been hit by. Natural disaster.. the pits and tears on the road, the way some cars were upside down and looked charred.

Movement out of the corner of her eye. She stepped out into the middle of the road, turning to face the flash of green she'd seen. She was wearing some kind of strange costume, smooth yet ragged and incomplete. Walking down the middle of street with a gold staff that rang on the pavement with each step, her mad laughter drifted on the wind, sending chill down Asuna's spine. No one san should hear such a laugh in real life. World seemed to flicker and suddenly she was in front of Asuna, smiling a twisted smile that snarled and made Asuna whimper, trying to step back. Her face might have once been beautiful, but now it was ravaged and twisted and mad, an inhuman mask over true monstrosity. She was roaring in Asuna's face, reaching up to as if to claw her cheek and there was nothing Asuna could do, no matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much she wanted to raise her arms and flail desperately, to get away, away, **away…**

The world turned red and a monstrous roar echoed over the world, chilling Asuna to her bones, reminding her she was just a shaved monkey and that not that long ago things in the dark ate her kind, and this was one such thing as the ground trembled…!

Asuna's eyes snapped open, gasping. Sweat dotted her face, and her nightclothes were uncomfortably saturated. Her blanket had been torn to shreds and lay in tatters around her, and one of her pillowcases was torn on one side. There were shards of wood around her head, most like from the deep gouge on her headboard. In the gouge, looking like a half-lidded cartoon eye glaring demonically down at her was the red glass-like disc she'd found in her pockets yesterday. It seemed to glow an intense red, like her room had its own traffic light.

She tried to rise and found out the hard way that the torn blanket had wrapped around her, causing her to sort of flop off the bed and land face-first on the carpeted floor of her room. It hurt a lot less than she would have thought it would, but she had not time to think of that as the rest of her followed her head to the floor. Frantically, instinctively, she tried to ope her legs, to move her limbs with the degree of freedom to which she was accustomed–

– and there was a ripping sound as the tatters of blanket tore from her movements as if they were nothing but wet and excessively noisy tissue paper. For a moment, Asuna lay there, looking in shock at what was left of a what had once been a frilly and actually quite comfortable but nevertheless sturdy blanket.

"What just happened?" she said.

Her alarm clock rang.

It was another perfectly ordinary day.

….

It was a perfectly ordinary day for Kaede. Get up, stretch, take a bath, relieve stress, have a quick breakfast, check her messages, get dressed, head for school, attend classes, have lunch, watch as every vending machine in the cafeteria exploded…

Okay, that had been weird.

Then she got lost on the way home.

….

Somewhere in Tokyo, a little girl was screaming. Now, usually, the reason for little girls screaming were excitement ("AH! I CAN'T BELEIVE IT'S NOT BUTTER!"), joy ("NO SCHOOL TOMORROW!"), anger ("AH! YOU PERVERT!"), mortification ("I GOT FAAAAAAT!") or unmentionable things ("IT'S TOO BIG! IT'S TOO BIG! I'M GOING TO BREAK!"). This little girl, however, was not screaming for any of those reasons. Contrary to popular belief, this isn't that kind of fic.

"WHAT AM I DOING HERE?" Keiko cried, tugging at her twintails in frustration, and making her invisible to passersby as they studiously ignored her. "MY TRAIN DOESN'T EVEN GO HERE!"

Seriously, it didn't. She'd been taking her train to school and back for more than a year now, and it didn't go anywhere near this part of Tokyo. She could actually see the bay from here she was standing and a bridge, though whether it was the Rainbow Bridge or the Dinosaur bridge, she couldn't tell. She couldn't even say if she was in Edogawa or Yokohama, just that she wasn't where she was supposed to be.

Scowling, she reached into a pocket and pulled out something round and hand-sized and covered in aluminum foil. She knew it was useless, but it wasn't like she had any lead of heavier metals to cover it with! She'd really tried looking for gold leaf. "Did you do this? Do I have brain cancer already?"

The people avoiding looking at her moved faster, and the slight gap widened for a moment.

Letting out a groan, Keiko made a mental tally of the money in her wallet. She could _probably_ make it home with it, but her poor allowance! With a snarl (or a cute pout, if you asked one of the people studiously ignoring her) she chucked the foil-covered haunted rock in a garbage can. Given how trying to get rid of it last night had been pretty useless it wasn't likely to help but it made her feel better, darn it!

….

Rika had concluded, by dint of waking up with all her limbs intact, in a room that wasn't filling with water, bleeding from the walls, having demonic hands grasping at her from every available surface, or relocated to Silent Hill, that her evil doom rock was still in the first half-hour of her horror movie and wouldn't be killing her any time soon. Sure, she'd had a scary dream with the seven fat cows and the seven thin cows playing trombones, but that was one she regularly had, and she'd long decided it meant she had to eat hamburgers for a week.

What? She was Japanese, not Jewish.

However, she was beginning to realize the stupid rock was some kind of sicko who was into psychological torture stuff. It was the only explanation she could think of for why she seemed to be lost on the familiar route home despite a mostly uneventful day at school ('mostly' because she had a sneaking suspicious who caused all the vending machines in the cafeteria to explode), why she couldn't seem to recognize any landmarks around her, and why she seemed to be missing time every few minutes, since she could go from walking down a street with the road on her right and having it on her left in the next blink, with no change to her pace and no memory of how she got there. Every time this happened she checked her pockets, eventually found the doomrock again, and dropped it into the nearest trashcan, but that didn't seem to stop it. It always popped up back in her bag or one of her pockets. She was glad it had popped up on top of the toilet instead of on her person when she'd taken the bath last night. She's seen that old movie with the magic remote control, and she didn't need this evil doomrock appearing in her ass because she was out of pockets.

"Okay, I thought we had a deal," Rika said, glaring a the doomrock after it had found its way back onto her person. She ignored how people started getting out of her way and ignoring her as she continued her tirade. "Seriously, stop it. I wasn't kidding, there's a jewelry store right there! Damn it, why are you taking me towards the bay? Is this a Titanic thing? Are you trying to escape the jewelry store by going to the ocean so you can sic your waterlogged little girl out of her well at me?"

….

Asuna wasn't really close to her brother. Sure, they lived in the same house together, but there was a huge gap in their ages, and to be honest, he'd always been busy when she was younger. She had a feeling he'd missed about half her birthday parties. But she was a dutiful sister and she didn't _hate_ him, and he'd been pretty okay those times they'd interacted together, especially when their mother wasn't around, so she dutifully visited him in the hospital where he was being taken care of after her school let out. Since they were richer, he got a bigger private room instead of a ward, but given it was still bland as the day he'd been admitted (blander. The first week there had at least been obligatory 'get well soon' stuff from coworkers and one or two genuine friends), there didn't seem much point. Sure, they'd hired a private nurse to watch over him, but given Asuna often caught Ako-san just sitting and working on the Great Japanese Nurse Novel before she politely made herself known, that was likely just a money sink that wouldn't get her brother out any sooner. He'd get out the same time as everyone else, if they ever did. At least he hadn't been among those who'd died almost daily in the first months.

She always felt awkward visiting, since beyond being the dutiful, sisterly thing to do, she really didn't know what else was expected of her. Just sit there for an hour? Read her brother books? Tell him about her day? Ask him for stock market advice? She didn't see that point of that. She was pretty sure her portfolio was better than his. Diversified too. So she mainly sat there doing her homework and feeling like she should bring something homely and colorful next time she was there, which she never got around to doing in any case.

On this particular day, she was making a halfhearted attempt to tell the story of what had happened at the field trip yesterday, including her random theory someone had gone and stolen the field-trip money. And had possibly gone on a thieving spree on the other schools as well, because why else would so many schools think going to the same abandoned rock quarry at the same time was a good idea?

Huh, she actually had a lot to tell him that day. Was this what having close family was like?

This was not a depressing thought because Asuna had little context by which to realize.

….

Eventually Suguha had to leave her brother's side, despite visiting hours not being over yet. After all, it was a long way back to Saitama.

She waited patiently for the elevator together with a girl with long, chestnut hair who looked vaguely familiar, probably someone she'd seen in the hospital before. Oh, yes, she'd seen that uniform yesterday, hadn't she? During the field trip? She wasn't surprised a girl from one of those schools had family in this hospital. SAO had taken away people from everywhere. She'd even left Kazuto a souvenir from a field trip, a large blue crystal that she thought he'd find interesting when he woke up.

Suguha paid the other girl no mind as they both waited for the elevator, her mind already on tomorrow's visit. They were both shoved together as more people entered the elevator to go down, and it set of the overload alarm at least twice, but Suguha was busy wondering what she could bring to give her brother's ward a nice scent. Candles were out, but maybe a scent bag or a spray…? It was wishful thinking to think he'd notice from within the game, but a doctor had told her the olfactory senses were the ones that bypassed a lot of higher order brain functions to cause the most visceral reactions. Maybe it would make him feel better.

When the elevator door opened and people started to exit, Suguha let herself go along with the flow, right up until she looked up to make her way to the front desk and out the door and realized she didn't recognize the view in front of her.

"Wha…?" the chestnut-haired girl beside her murmured, obviously surprised as well. "Did I get on the wrong elevator?"

This was clearly a facetious question, since they seemed to be in a mall.

In Suguha's bag, something blue glowed.

….

"OH, COME ON!" Keiko cried, increasing her invisibility stat as people ignored the clearly upset girl. "HOW DID I GET ON A BRIDGE? I WASN'T EVEN TRYING TO GET ON A BRIDGE! IS THIS BRAIN CANCER? IS THIS WHAT BRAIN CANCER IS LIKE?"

"Water? Oh, you ARE trying to get me killed by water?" someone behind her said. "Joke's on you, you haunted paperweight, I'm wise to your game. I'm not moving from this spot, AND I can swim!"

There was a beat as two girls heard each other and turned around. Keiko looked at the black crystal with strange golden growths along it's edge the taller girl was holding. Rika looked at the bright yellow crystal partially covered in tinfoil in the shorter girl's hands.

"You got a an evil haunted doomrock too?" Rika said in a tone that said she was done with this shit.

"You should get rid of that, it's radiation might give you cancer," Keiko said, in a voice equally done with this shit.

They looked out onto the water on the other side of the railing to one side of the pedestrian walk of the bridge they were on and, in one synchronized motion, threw both crystals into the bay, watching intently until the little specks splashed into the waters below. They both nodded, then exchanged looks. Wearily, the two began checking their pockets, and let out simultaneous sighs as they both found what they were looking for.

"It's not even wet," Rika said, sounding affronted. "I mean, it's like we never even bothered to throw the damned things."

Off to their left, someone threw a shining pink rock into the bay. It glittered in the air and they both watched until it became a little speck and splashed into the waters below.

The two turned their heads to look at the girl standing there, arm still extended. She searched her pockets, eventually revealing a pink crystal with golden edging. "Yup, not even wet," Kaede said. "I wonder if I can get anything for it? That would be such a cool money generator."

The girl wore a bright and cheery smile, the kind that a would make an even partly suspicious person suspicious. Keiko was not this sort of person, and quite frankly she had her own problems worrying about whether she was having brain cancer at the moment.

Rika eyed the girl in the gray school uniform, something tickling her mind. "Did your school go on a field trip yesterday?"

The girl blinked in surprise. "Uh, yes, we did."

"Rock quarry?" Keiko added.

The girl nodded. "I think someone made off with the field trip money."

"Ah!" Rika exclaimed, pointing at Keiko. "I remember you now! You're the girl messing around with explosives who made that wall explode!"

"I wasn't messing around with anything!" Keiko exclaimed. "That wall exploded all by itself!"

"You expect me to believe that?" Rika retorted.

For an answer, Keiko threw her possibly-radioactive sample into the ocean. It glittered in the air and they all watched until it became a little speck and splashed into the waters below. A beat, then Keioko reached into her pocket and let out an annoyed grunt at finding something there. "I blaming this radioactive hunk of rock."

Rika frowned, but nodded. "Yeah, my evil haunted doomrock seems the type to make things explode just to satisfy its dark and terrible hatred against humanity."

There was an awkward silence at those words.

"Well, this has been fun, but I need to go home now," Kaede said, turning her back to them and walking away. They watched as she headed for the western end of the bridge, soon losing sight of her among the other pedestrians.

Rika and Keiko exchanged looks, then turned to look towards the east, in time to see Kaede appearing from behind a pedestrian, walking towards them. She froze as she saw them, confusion running across her face waving a big that read 'WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?' and looking behind her as if expecting to see some sort of trick that explained this.

"I don't think the evil rocks are going to let us get away," Rika said, throwing the black stone in her hands towards the bay. It glittered in the air and they watched until it became a little speck and splashed into the waters below.

With a sigh, Rika checked her pockets, found the rock and once more threw it into the bay. It glittered in the air and they watched until it became a little speck and splashed into the waters below. "This is getting frustrating. Do either of you know any exorcists?"

"Nope, sorry. I don't have any exorcists in my contacts," Kaede said, hefting the pink rock and throwing it into the bay. It glittered in the air and they watched until it became a little speck and splashed into the waters below. She nodded, then checked her pockets and nodded again. "Okay, seriously wondering what these would be worth to a pawn shop."

"Excuse me?"

The three looked up from the stones in their hands. A slim girl with long chestnut hair and another girl with a straight-edged bobcut and huge… tracts of land stood there, looking distressed. "Can you tell us where we are?" the girl with the… extensive real estate said. "Because… um, we're a bit lost."

Rika and Keioko ignored them. This wasn't because they were being rude, but because one girl had a bright red glow coming out of her bag, and the other girl had a bright blue glow.

"Ah, so are we," Kaede said. "But I think were on the rainbow bridge. See, that's Odaiba over there."

"Excuse me," Keiko said. "But why are your bags glowing with potentially radioactive intensity?"

Both girls blinked, looking a their bags and gave starts of surprise. They opened their bags, rifling through the contents. It didn't take long to ind the offending items.

"Wha– I thought I left this in oni-chan's room?" Suguha said, confused.

"I thought I left this at home," Asuna said, sounding equally perplexed.

"Yeah, the evil haunted doomrocks don't really care about things like that," Rika said, nodding wisely. "They're kinda stalkery little rocks."

"They might also be giving you brain cancer, since they're a good chance they're radioactive," Keiko said.

Both girls dropped the glowing objects like they were burning hot. One of them held up their bag between them and the glowing rocks as if that would help.

"Hey, wanna see a neat trick?" Rika said brightly. She picked up the red and blue rocks and one by one threw them and her own black rock out onto the bay. They glittered in the air and the girls watched until they became a little specks and splashed into the waters below. Then, making a show of pulling back her sleeves, Rika checked her pockets and pulled out her black rock with a flourish. "And if you check you're own pockets, you'll find your rocks have been returned to you."

The two quickly checked, surprised to find the rocks in fact on their persons. "Amazing!" Asuna exclaimed, gazing at Rika in awe. "Are you a street magician?"

"No, you're holding a pair of haunted doomrocks cursed with a dark and terrible lust for human souls who will not let you escape their evil grasps," Rika said.

"And there's a good chance they're radioactive too," Keiko said helpfully.

"You said that already," Kaede said.

"It was important, so I repeated it," Keiko said.

Shuddering at that, and looking clearly freaked out by the the rock returning out of nowhere, Suguha looked around and spotted a trash can. She quickly tossed her blue rock inside, wiping her hands nervously as she did so. Rika and Keiko exchanged glances that, if they said anything, might be called sarcastic, and did the same, followed by Kaede. Asuna was last, and looked like she expected another magic trick.

"They're glowing ominously," Rka noted as five different colors glowed brightly from within the trashcan. "And I'm kinda impressed my doomrock has a black glow. How the heck does something glow black, anyway?"

Kaede frowned. Something tickled the back of her mind, and almost without her being aware, her mouth formed words. "How did that explosion in the rock quarry happen again?"

Keiko's eyes went wide, and turned, clearly intending to run away. She hadn't even taken one step when the trashcan exploded, sending a wave of force in all directions. Glass broke and cars crashed as they were caught by the wave, shoved sideways and slamming into each other, quickly piling up at that point in the road. People on the pedestrian walk, distracted by talking to their friends, using their phone, or just had their heads down, were caught by surprise, getting knocked down or slammed against the railings. Trashcan shrapnel flew everywhere, and garbage with it. At the point of explosion, the pedestrian walk was blown apart, sending concrete dust everywhere, leaving only twisted metal and a sizable gap in the walk.

And the five people who were closest to the explosion and standing right in front of it were all thrown violently into the air, flying out towards the bay. They glittered as they spun, screaming, but there was no one to watch as they became a little specks and splashed into the waters below.

….

Keade wondered if this was what death was like. Above, water glittered, and muted sunlight twinkle weakly. Her entire body was wet, as to be expected when one is violently tossed into the air and into the bay. _Un_ expectedly, she was a lot dryer than she thought she would be as if the water had been mostly squeezed out. Also, the fact she had no injuries or broken bones despite being right next to an otherworldly explosion was also very weird.

"This is a dream," Keiko said numbly, just really, really done with this shit as Kaede looked around, noting there seemed to be a wall of water that rippled behind them, held back by nothing but air. "I already have brain cancer, and this is just some weird dream as my brain turns into garbage and my organs slowly shut down, isn't it?"

"Nah, we've clearly gotten to the part of the movie where the otherworldly and evil forces of the cursed doomrock are now trying to slowly but earnestly kill us for the next 45 minutes," Rika said, voice equally numb and done with this shit as Kaede looked down, noting the mix of bare stone and dry sand they stood on. "I knew I should have just sold this thing to a jewelry store."

"W-what happened?-!" Asaun cried, looking around in a panic. "Where are we?"

"Why are we not dead?" Suguha asked breathlessly, slightly calmer but no less freaked. "Wh– wh– "

Ahead of them, there was a rumble. Keiko yelped, holding up her bag as a flimsy shield as lights glowed in front of them.

Kaede stared.

Eventually, the rest did as well.

"Is that a space ship?" Rika said.

Kaede sighed. Clearly, the vending machines exploding at lunch had been a sign.

….

 **\- To be continued…**

….

A/N: Because there wasn't one in the crossover section, which I thought needed to be corrected.

Argo doesn't seem to have a canon IRL name, so I'm going with 'Senou Kaede'. I know naming her after her seiyuu is more traditional, but honestly, this gives me more leeway for jokes. That comment will eventually make sense.

Wow, that… used more horror movie tropes that I thought it would. I knew basing this crossover on the 2017 movie would make it grittier by default but Strea's Boobs! I was NOT expecting this going the way it did.

Please review, CC welcome.

Until next time, this is Shadow, signing off.


End file.
